Marksmanship Hunter Artifact Weapon: Thas'dorah – Legion 7.3.5

This section of the Marksmanship Hunter guide explains the best possible choices for the Netherlight Crucible, important traits and relic bonuses, and how to progress through your artifact weapon Thas'dorah. This guide is written by Delirium from the Thrill of the Wild and the Hunting Party Podcast. Updated for the latest patch.

Active Ability

Equipping Thas'dorah grants you the ability Getto di Vento, which focuses the wind through your bow to deal a massive amount of damage, creating a wind path that increases the movement speed from your allies inside of it.

Netherlight Crucible

The Netherlight Crucible is a new system added in Patch 7.3. The Crucible allows you further empower your Marksman Hunter Artifact Weapon, by specializing and increasing the power from your relics. With it, each relic receives a small talent tree that you can select new traits from, depending how many traits your weapon have. Do not worry, however, because with the changes to Artifact Knowledge, unlocking the full power of the Crucible won't take long. Learn everything about this new system in our Netherlight Crucible Guide. With the opening of Antorus, il Trono Infuocato, it is now possible to obtain Fregio della Grande Armata, which increases the potency of your Tier 2 Crucible traits by 50%. It might be a really strong legendary if you are lucky with Netherlight Crucible rolls!

Notes before using this guide:

You can use the item level equivalencies to compare multiple paths within one relic, or to compare the value of two different relics. To do so, just add up the item level equivalencies in a particular path, and compare it to the item level equivalencies in another path. For different relics, just include the "+ ilvl" shown on the relic with the equivalencies shown on the tables from the best path in each relic.

The item level equivalencies shown here refer to weapon item levels, not the item level shown on the relic. Remember that while the relics go up in multiples of five item levels, your weapon only increases correspondingly by 1 or 2 item levels.

The relative weapon item level value of each relic trait will change depending on what item level your weapon is. This is because weapon damage scales exponentially with item level increases, while the values of these relic traits do not. Because of this, the values listed below are accurate for a Marksman Hunter wearing heroic Tomb of Sargeras raid gear, but are not as accurate for a Marksman Hunter in mythic raid gear, or normal or lower raid gear.

For a MM Hunter in Mythic Tomb of Sargeras gear, the values of the best traits are at best equivalent to about +3 weapon item levels, rather than the +5 that they would provide for Normal raiders. This means you'll be less likely to want to choose a lower ilvl relic with better traits the higher your weapon's ilvl is (though that may still happen).

Despite all of this, the relative value of the relic traits should still apply.

The only reliable way to know what relic will be best for you, is to simulate yourself using a service like raidbots.

If you're simming yourself, remember that it's easier to change enchantments and gems than it is to change the second tier of the crucible traits. You may get an odd result such as saying that the Velocità della Luce is your best trait. This is probably due to a quark of the simulation, or a particularly strange level of Haste you have on your gear. In a case like this, you'll likely want to go with one of the recommended relic traits from here, so you won't be stuck with a bad relic trait after you get other gear upgrades.

The values of each relic trait in this guide are based on priority target damage. There may be some relic traits that will preform better in mass AoE fights, but in most cases, the type of damage those traits do won't be as beneficial to your raid team (even if it makes your personal DPS look good on a few particular fights).

Artifact Bonuses:

Centro - When you damage a target below 20% health, you gain 3% critical strike for 6 seconds, stacking up to 30 times.This is a situationally very powerful ability, as in fights with add waves, you can “cherry pick” low health targets to stack up a high Crit buff, and then unload that on your priority target.

Piedi del Vento - Marksmanship Hunters already have a much more reliable way to break snares from Velocità di Fuga, and the dodge chance isn't reliable enough to let you ignore mechanics. However, there are several raid-wide mechanics that can be dodged, so this may be a useful addition to Aspetto del Ghepardo in emergency situations.

Scarica Ciclonica - With Windburst fairly high on our priority list, any extra damage from Cyclonic Burst only makes it more valuable.

Armonia degli Spezzalegione - A significant Agility buff that should occur on average every 44 seconds. At rank 1, this provides 4000 agility for 10 seconds, and gains an additional 300 agility per rank.

Recommended Build Paths

Because Blizzard has greatly increased the Artifact Knowledge level, there is no excuse for showing up to raid without having completed all of your Artifact Traits up until Concordance of the Legionfall. As such, the Marksman Hunter Artifact path you take to complete the weapon is not in the slightest bit important. This is especially true for anyone wanting to play a MM Hunter, because we Hunters pay our dues, and never show up to raid unprepared.

For those slackers who just refused to do their fair share of preparation, the below is considered to be the most optimal path to unlock your weapon traits, based on the quickest way to do the most damage possible.

From there, you'll go through Windrunner's Guidance to get your second golden trait, Legacy of the Windrunners, as your 20th point, and then go through Precision to get Call of the Hunter on your 24th point, rounding out the last of your golden traits.

From there, you can finish Quickshot and Critical Focus, before putting the last of your Artifact Power into the last two defensive abilities, Healing Shell and Survival of the Fittest.

7.2 Artifact Trait Paths

After completing your 35th trait, you can do a quest which will open up 4 new traits, and the ability to upgrade all of the 3 level traits to a 4th level. Begin by upgrading Frecce Infallibili to 4/4 as soon as possible, as this is by far our largest DPS gain. Next, seek out your highest DPS traits from the old path, and upgrade them to 4/4. This will vary some depending on the type of rotation you use, and whether you want to focus on AoE or Single Target damage. I recommend focusing on traits that affect Aimed Shot first (Mira Mortale and Marchio della Morte), as those buffs will multiply with Frecce Infallibili, and will help your priority target damage the most; however, you should think about the type of damage your raid team most needs, and how quickly you'll be able to unlock the more AoE focus traits (like Marked Shot buffs).